Author Archives: amy

November 28, 2007

TTFN

As the co-founder and chief community officer of a fast growing startup it’s hard to take even a few hours off…. However, I don’t have much choice as I’m due to launch my latest project any day now — a baby girl. My official maternity leave will be rather brief — it’s difficult to truly check out for long, especially when I love my job so much (don’t fear, Mommy-police, I’ll be working while taking care of my baby) — but while I am gone, I leave the Satisfaction community in the very capable hands of our new Community Manager, Eric Suesz, who comes from the world of publishing, most recently as an editor at Macworld magazine. Eric has already proven to be a valuable resource on getsatisfaction.com. And of course, the whole Satisfaction team will continue to support the community with their insights and knowledge of our own product as well as the products and services everyone loves discussing.

And I’m sure that even while I’m officially out I’ll be popping in from time to time. Some addictions are hard to overcome.

By amy | Posted in Satisfaction, community | Comments (0)
October 30, 2007

Want to help deliver Satisfaction?

Satisfaction is looking for a Community Manager

We’ve got a huge market, a disruptive business model, a proven team, A-list investors, and a healthy disregard for convention. Now we’re in the market for a passionate Community Manager to join our seven-person team (located in our high-ceilinged, light-filled office in South Park) on a contract basis with the potential for full-time hire. The Community Manager is central to the care & feeding of the community, cultivating engagement with all users, setting a tone throughout the site, moderating the range of human expression – from positive to dealing with spam – and much more. The role is core to our business and we’re looking for someone who is ready to passionately take it on.

I’m Chief Community Officer and will be taking some time off starting in early December for the birth of my baby. I could use some part-time help starting, well, now, and then want to be sure the new CM is ramped up to take on the role full-time while I’m out on maternity leave. We expect that even after I return to work there will be enough work for two people. Our Community Manager will report to me and do a variety of tasks ranging from administrative in nature, to engagement, outreach and much more.

Now the brass tacks. This role will be responsible for:

- Overseeing the activity across getsatisfaction.com
- Monitoring the addition of new companies, employee claims and flags (the administrative part)
- Responding to topics in the /satisfaction site along with the rest of the team
- Adding new topics to the /satisfaction site as necessary (help, FAQs, press posts, etc)
- Researching and reaching out to their own network to source and supply answers to unanswered questions where needed across getsatisfaction.com and to encourage participation
- Starting topics in new companies that need a kick-start
- Reaching out to companies to encourage participation, to do more to drive traffic to their Satisfaction sites and to provide more information on their Satisfaction sites
- Adding tags and products across getsatisfaction.com as necessary
- Reaching out to top users and top employees to reward and incentivize – includes brainstorming reward programs
- Communicate with company reps regarding updates on outages, issues, new features
- Work toward pre-defined goals and monitor statistics for analyzing success

There is a lot of room for evolving the role and figuring out new ways to grow the community, further engage users and encourage participation.

A good fit for this role is someone who…

- Is highly motivated for personal achievement in a small startup-up environment
- Knows online community – either has worked professionally in or has a history of being active in online communities
- Has dealt with a range of community moderation issues and best practices
- Understands what Satisfaction is and is passionate about what we’re doing
- Has good communication and writing skills
- Is generally a people-person and understands how to deal with issues delicately, humbly and with humor
- Has a broad understanding of the internet, web technology, and social media

- Has good Internet research skills
- Is organized, detail-oriented
- Likes French food, because the chef at our local bistro loves us so we eat there a lot

If you’re interested in the position, please send an email to amy@getsatisfaction.com expressing why you feel you’re right for the job along with a resume and/or LinkedIn profile, blog URL, etc. You can start to impress us with your “Satisfaction voice” by participating a bit across getsatisfaction.com and sending me your user name along with a link to your Satisfaction user dashboard.

You can learn a whole lot more about us by reading this blog, and specifically these three posts.

You can get a sense of how I interact in Satisfaction by perusing my activity here.

By amy | Posted in community, jobs | Comments (1)
October 26, 2007

Satisfaction this week

HOT TOPIC
Timbuk2
Timbuk2 Travel: Want to help us design our new travel line?
A few weeks ago Timbuk2 started soliciting ideas for their new travel line from their community on Satisfaction. They’ve received over 70 replies so far and the ideas are still rolling in. Their design phase ends October 31 so if you’ve got that brilliant idea that they need to hear, jump into the conversation now! So far the “People’s Pick” is from user, Jahue: “I would love to see a tough laptop compartment that could handel [sic] having another persons carry-on on top of it. I would also love to see lots of external pockets for those items that need to be gotten to quickly, such as ( camera, phone, ipod, psp, passport, tickets, earphones, pen/pencil, etc ) I currently travel with my commute and it works well, exept I am always worried about the amount of padding in the laptop compartment, and not having enough room for a complete change of clothes. Thanks”. Timbuk2 just doesn’t cease to impress us with their transparency and eagerness to embrace their community.

NEW COMPANIES ON SATISFACTION
photophlow
photophlow is real-time communication with Flickr photos.
photophlow is doing a private beta right now so you have to enter your email address and hope for an invitation, but the guys from photophlow are already really active in their Satisfaction site which to me indicates that they are excited about interacting with their user community. So if you’re lucky enough to have been invited in, you can get all your questions answered and share beta feedback with them there. And if you’re not in the beta yet and wondering what the heck it is? They say it’s “a fun way to share flickr photos in real time. invite your friends, search together, chat and comment all at once.” Sounds promising. I signed up for an invite. Fingers crossed!

COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT TIP
Google
Don’t be afraid to say you’re sorry. A Google customer was pretty pee’d off earlier this week about a losing two hours of work using Google Docs on Opera because, as it turned out, the two weren’t compatible but there was no warning that saving the work wouldn’t be possible. I was so inspired by how the Google rep handled the situation. Words like “We have confirmed this bug. And you are right, it’s a bad one. Thank you very much for being the first person to report it” — And the topper: “I’m very sorry for your earlier data loss. It was entirely our fault” put a smile on my face and send a chill up my spine — in a good way. Historically, I think companies have been afraid to admit when they’re wrong for fear of some kind of liability. IMHO, admitting you’re wrong mitigates risk rather than increasing it. It can also turn an angry customer into a loyal and grateful one, potentially making them a great source for the network effects of word of mouth marketing. Plus, it’s just the right thing to do.

By amy | Posted in case studies, community, customer service | Comments (2)
October 14, 2007

Whipped into shape at the EFF Bootcamp

Running an online community can be tricky business these days for many reasons, not least of which are the legal issues that can arise when you’re hosting content supplied by hundreds, thousand or even millions of people. However, there are some laws in place to protect both the service provider and even the content providers. The EFF, a non-profit legal organization that defends the rights of people expressing themselves online, hosted a Bootcamp last week. As a community manager wanting to look out for the best interests of our users while covering our collective butt in the process it was a useful and enlightening day.

Several EFF staff attorneys teamed up with various attorneys from the private sector to talk about issues like CDA 230 & Defamation, Copyright and Trademark infringement, DMCA protection (there are 4 safe harbors — you should know that!), how to deal with Takedown notices, Fair Use (the EFF loves this and so do we!), Creative Commons, obscenity and child porn, what to do when law enforcement shows up at your door, how to handle subpoenas and lots more fun stuff. A few highlights I took away from it were:

- Have a notice and takedown procedure in place (And remember, sometimes Takedown notices can be countered)

- Register a copyright agent with the copyright office

- Fair Use is your friend but be sure you understand when it applies and when it doesn’t

- Have an official policy in place for how you deal with obscene material (if it’s illegally obscene, like kiddy porn, you are actually required to notify law enforcement if it’s been posted to your site!)

- Minimize logging of customer activity if you want to completely avoid ever being forced into turning over customer records (there are actually a lot of safe-guards that protect you here, but the safest is to not log info at all. Not realistic for all sites, but good to be aware of)

- Establish a record-retention and deletion policy and stick to it

- Understand your Privacy Policy and make sure you’re willing to uphold it to the best of your abilities

- Don’t be afraid to oppose a subpeona

- Linden Labs is pretty damn cool (they sent a “Proceed and Permit” notice to the makers of the “Get a First Life” web site and even gave them a license to use their Trademark. I love companies that have a sense of humor)

If you want to chat about any of these issues or ask questions of EFF, visit our EFF Satisfaction site.

By amy | Posted in community, conferences | Comments (1)
February 28, 2007

Is the customer always right?

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of customer service related posts (go figure) and have been intrigued by this debate. There are those who believe that every customer is valuable no matter what, and should be tirelessly catered to. There are those who are willing to lose customers that cause too much trouble. And there are those who argue that sometimes a customer just isn’t a good fit, and should be “let go”.

I think there’s some validity on both sides of the debate – though it’s never in the company’s best interest to belittle or provoke a customer. The Internet is too dangerous a place to needlessly risk pissing people off. That being said, the basic premise of “The Customer is Always Right” is wrong.

The phrase, made popular by 19th Century department store magnates, Marshall Field and Harry Gordon Selfridge , was merely a marketing tactic. It’s designed to imply that store employees are in a position of virtual servitude to the customer. With this mandate an employee should never speak out of turn or–gasp!–actually disagree with a customer, even if the customer is wrong or out of line. Despite the propaganda, this is no recipe for empowering employees to serve customers to their fullest abilities. Southwest Airlines, by contrast, gets consistently spectacular results by putting customers second.

And anyway, does the Customer is Always Right rule result in a rewarding experience for customers? Can you imagine a personal relationship where the one ground rule is that you are always right? Maybe you’re thinking, yes, I’d love it if my spouse finally conceded that I am always right. But let’s be real: there’s no room in that for a healthy exchange that leads to mutual understanding, growth and positive change. At the end of the day we’d feel patronized, even manipulated, if our loved ones only nodded their head in agreement after everything we said.

Frankly, I care less about being right and more about being heard as a customer. There is nothing more frustrating than a customer service rep who placates you by sending you down another phone tree rather than saying no to your request. There are times I’m in the right and times when I’m not. And I’m okay with that. But let’s have a conversation about it so that we can both learn and, together, improve the product or service. That’s how we’ll foster a meaningful relationship.

By amy | Posted in customer service, philosophy | Comments (2)